


Throw Yourself At The Ground

by runningondreams



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials, Childhood, Don't Try This At Home, Flying, Gen, Tony Feels, ambiguous canon, ill-advised decision-making, kid!Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 12:28:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2812010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runningondreams/pseuds/runningondreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony spends most of his time thinking about flying. The key is forgetting that you're supposed to fall. </p><p>A Marvel/His Dark Materials AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Throw Yourself At The Ground

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [iloome](http://archiveofourown.org/users/iloome/pseuds/iloome) for the beta :)  
> The title (and part of the summary) is from Douglas Adams in _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_.

Their favourite thing when they’re young is to climb as high as possible (stairs, trees, the gaps between bricks — the closer they can be to the air the whole way up, the better), and then Brighidan will change into a bird, or maybe a bat, and Tony will stand on his tiptoes, leaning against air while she climbs and dives and climbs again.

The wind rushing past their faces, the swooping thrill of leaving the dull ground behind; there are days when it’s all they want in the world, days when the walls feel too close and Tony’s brain runs too fast and they just have to get out, up into the sky.

They get in trouble, of course. Crying nannies begging them to _be more careful, such a bright boy, why can’t you follow simple rules_. They lose count of the times Jarvis fetches them down, one eyebrow arched to perfectly convey his lack of surprise, his hands on his hips and elegant Hestiana twitching her whiskers at them disdainfully.

Father shakes his head at them, Vesteria glaring down her beak on his shoulder, and Mother sighs and runs her fingers through Tony’s hair, Rondolon curled on her wrist, his forked tongue flickering just in front of Tony’s nose.

When they’re nine, Tony builds himself a pair of wings based on Brighidan’s bat form. He hauls them up to the roof of the mansion, ignoring her worries and little fluttering attempts to tug him back to bed. He says, _Come on, Bree, you know it’ll work,_ and she says, _You haven’t even done any stress tests yet, you’re abridging the scientific process because you’re impatient_. He clips on the harness and spreads out the wings — oilcloth and springy willow branches, with a pulley system to adjust the spread mid-flight.

 _If we die, it’s all your fault_ , she tells him as he steps up to the ledge.

They don’t die. Tony can’t get much lift, but a controlled dive is still thrilling, and after that night they have a new game, one where Tony can share his own excitement instead of just basking in hers.

When they’re 11, Tony has a growth spurt and the wings break — he’s too tall and too heavy, and when he tries to bank around the big oak tree he can’t quite make it. The cloth snags and rips on long-fingered tree branches, and Tony hits the ground _hard,_ so hard he blacks out, pain a white-hot shock up his side.

He wakes up crying, Bree nuzzling his face with a soft fox nose and keening. He can’t move his right hand, and the pain when he tries to push himself to his feet sets off flashbulbs behind his eyes.

Help is too far away. It’s the middle of the night. No one will be up for hours.

Tony ends up crawling back toward the mansion, dragging himself on his good side inch by torturous inch until Brighidan can get close enough to the servants rooms to find Jarvis.

He’s never seen Jarvis look so scared. His face is almost colorless in the moonlight, his lips so thin they almost disappear. And Hestiana is frantic, bounding around them and chasing at shadows, her tail high and her yellow-green eyes wide and luminous, like there’s some threat she can rend with her claws and teeth instead of just Tony’s own stupidity to blame.

Back inside, Tony’s swaddled in blankets and Bree curls up under his chin, the smallest mouse she can be. The doctor tells them Tony’s right leg and wrist are broken. He needs to go to the hospital and get casts put on. All he can think is that he won’t be flying again for a long time.

Father tells him he shouldn't have been up there anyway—he should be focusing on his studies, not scaling buildings and trying to break his neck in childish games. Mother says she wishes he'd be more careful, that he’s sure to find other things he loves to do, if he'll just take the time to try them.

Tony ducks his head and doesn’t cry. Clenches his good hand into a fist and says _well, at least I’m left handed, right?_

The time he used to spend flying or climbing he spends designing machines instead. Machines that can pick things up for him. Machines that can move around, can carry out tasks and make decisions on their own, like daemons, but with programming instead of spirit. (Bree says, _that’s an insult to daemons,_ and Tony says, _what if we’d had one that night, wouldn’t that have been better?_ ) Prosthetics. Medical equipment.

Machines that can fly better than he ever could, but still not as well as Bree.

Even when the casts come off, when he can walk and use his right hand again, he doesn’t go back to the wings. They were childish things. He’s better now. A better engineer. And with two hands he can start seeing if his ideas actually work.

Bree still goes flying sometimes, and Tony stays stuck to the ground, watching her soar against the blue expanse of sky and taking notes on velocity and air resistance, sketching out equations of lift and thrust and drag.

One morning he wakes up and he’s 13 years old and Bree is hiding from him. She’s not in the bed, curled up beside him like when they went to sleep. She’s not perched on the metal skeleton that’s slowly starting to look like a plane, poking at the finicky gears with long bat fingers.

He checks the closet but she’s not there either, camouflaged and waiting to pounce. She hasn’t hidden in his shoes and none of them look any more chewed on than they had before.

She hasn’t filled the bathtub so she can take a quick dip. She’s not cuddled in the laundry hamper, sniffing disdainfully about how much he stinks.

He calls for her, giving up the game, but she doesn’t answer. But she can’t have gone far, literally. He throws the window open and sticks his head out just in case she somehow managed to close it behind her, and calls again.

There’s a rustle behind him, and when he turns around he can see a tuft of black and white tail sticking out from under the bed frame.

He lies down on the floor and sure enough, there she is, curled in on herself. A dim gray shape under the shadow of the bed.

He reaches for her, brushes her flank with his fingertips, and she flinches away from him.

 _Bree?_ He asks. _What happened? Can you let me fix it?_

She shuffles around to look at him then. Pert ears twitching over small curved horns, her eyes luminous and slit-pupiled.

 _You can’t fix it_ , she moans _. No one can._

 _Come out from there,_ he urges. _Come out. We’ll make it better._

She inches forward on knobby knees, hooves tucked behind her, and he laughs.

_What are you doing? Just change to something smaller, come on!_

_That’s the problem_ , she says, shrinking in on herself. _I can’t._

Tony lets his chin fall to the rug and looks at her for a moment. Her legs are lean and her hooves are almost dainty. Her long nose widens up to large round eyes. He reaches out again and her hair is soft and smooth. She presses her nose against his palm and he pets the swirl of a cowlick over her brow, scratches cautiously around her horns.

They’ve settled, and Bree doesn’t have wings.

 _Well_ , he says. _At least you’ll still match my tux._

She laughs and scoots the rest of the way out from under the bed.

 _I’m sorry_ , she says pressing her face against his sternum. He pets her back, tracing knobby lumps of vertebrae down to jutting hips.

 _Don’t be,_ he tells her. _You’re beautiful and wonderful and mine._

She nips at him through his T-shirt and he yelps.

 _Don’t lie,_ she says. _I know you wanted me to fly._

 _I wanted both of us to fly_ , he tells her. _We’ll just have to find another way now_.

She rears her head back to glare at him, one golden eye at a time.

 _I’m not wearing anything that hasn’t been put through proper testing_ , she says, prim.

He tugs on her ears, grinning, and she snaps her teeth at his fingers.

 _Of course not_ , he tells her _. I’d never take that risk. Not with you._

**Author's Note:**

> The Iron Goat
> 
>  


End file.
